Over the weekend, I made this video – it’s a short video of me teaching my daughter to parallel park (fyi – she did great!).

I decided to upload it to Facebook and to YouTube, and noticed a couple of differences:

Facebook:

the video took MUCH longer to upload. I think that under 2 minute video took 1-2 hours to upload. I went to bed, then finished it the next morning.

Facebook has a built-in audience (people who friended me). So it was pretty quickly watched, liked, and commented on (388 views so far). And it’s Facbook, so comments were from librarians, college friends, my parents, and some of my daughter’s friends.

Youtube can have a built-in audience, but not so much on my Youtube channel. As of today, the video has been viewed 22 times. Unless you are Casey Neistat or some other popular Youtuber (or have a cool, focused niche channel), you really need to share your videos elsewhere to get them watched.

And a reminder – Facebook’s algorithm favors native video, rather than YouTube videos. So if you are making videos for your library or organization, upload the video to BOTH places. Use the YouTube video on your website or blog, and post it to places like Twitter or LinkedIn. Use the Facebook version for Facebook.

YouTube is the second-largest social networking site, behind Facebook. A 2014 Pew Research Center study of online adults found that three-quarters (77%) of internet users are on Facebook, while 63% use YouTube. Although YouTube has a smaller reach than Facebook, it is more widely used than LinkedIn (25%), Google Plus (24%) and Twitter (21%).

The article also says that 72% of online adults use sites like YouTube and Vimeo. They are watching videos.

Ok then. Why are we not using YouTube more? It is more widely used that LinkedIn and Twitter combined!

So … some things you can do to start (we’re working through the same things):

Beef up your library’s YouTube account (or get one if you haven’t yet)

Do some brainstorming on content ideas – think through a mix of tutorials, training, fun, and organizational news reporting types of videos

Figure out who can do the work. Make a team if possible

Create a schedule. It doesn’t have to be every day, or even every week – but consistency is key

And the hardest one – just start already. Make sure the video is short and the audio can be heard (most important thing in a YouTube video), and post that video. Then post it to social media (think about uploading separately to Facebook) and your website.

Last week, my library posted a Youtube video for National Library Week that went “viral.” No, not millions of views viral, but over 100,000 views in a week viral. Which is pretty big for us!

That’s not our most watched video ever … yet. I’m pretty sure it will make that in a week or two. But it is our most viral video to date, meaning that it spread around the web pretty fast, and was repostedinquite a fewplaces with larger audiences.

How did we do it? That’s a good question, and ultimately it’s hard to predict what will “go viral” and what won’t. That said, there are definitely some ways to make your videos better, which will help get your video viewed by more people.

6 Tips on Going Viral:

Start with great content. You have to start with the content. It has to be well-done and interesting enough for people to watch for 1-3 minutes, and then want to share with their social media friends.

Create something that makes sense to your viewers. Our video was written from the customer’s point of view, which helped it be interesting to more than just a librarian audience. This isn’t always the case for truly viral videos (triple rainbow, anyone?), but it certainly can’t hurt!

Have a hook. Or 2. Or 3. By “hook,” I mean have something in the video that catches people’s attention. This video had several: It was done for National Library Week (captured a library industry audience); we used people in our community (captured a local audience); and we inserted a ton of Taylor Swift “easter eggs” in the video (captured Taylor Swift fans).

Give extra attention to audio and lighting. Again, the goal is not Hollywood quality – we are a library, after all! But to the best of your ability, make sure your audio, lighting, and video is good enough that it doesn’t detract from the content of the video.

Use people who don’t mind being “in front of the camera.” We’re libraries, so we’ll probably use library staff in the video, which is great! However – have you ever watched a library video that was sorta painful? Bad singing, obviously reading a script, very nervous, etc? Believe me, I know – I’ve made some of those myself! There’s an easy way to fix that. I’ll bet you have some library staff who do better behind the camera (writing, filming, helping out), and some who do well in front of the camera. Use appropriately! Also think about training staff to be in front of the camera, or maybe partner with a local theater group.

Push it everywhere. We published our video on Monday morning. Then we posted it to our website and pushed it hard on Facebook and Twitter pretty much the rest of the week. We even used a couple of hashtags (#NLW15, #swifties, and #taylorswift) to attract more viewers. All that sharing helped a lot.

If you follow these 6 simple tips, will this guarantee your video will go viral? No. It’s hard to say what will capture the attention of a bunch of people for 2 minutes!

But if you follow these six simple tips, you will definitely improve your videos. That’s always a good thing.

We have to create some type of annual report each year. And honestly … people mostly DON’T look at these. Sure, you can mail them to everyone. Print them out and place them in strategic locations in the library. Send them to parter organizations in your community.

But read them? Maybe some people will give it a cursory glance … and them toss it into the trash, like a greeting card.

With our video? There’s enough eye candy there for people to watch, and maybe learn something more about their library, and what their tax dollars are actually going to.

Here’s a cool new feature I just discovered in Youtube. I posted a short, really bouncy video (bouncy because I walk sorta bouncy). The video’s nothing fancy – really just me, playing with my new iPhone 5.

Youtube noticed the bounciness of the video, and automatically offered to “fix it.” And it did an ok job, too! Now the video looks really smooth (odd, since I’m talking about how bouncy I walk in the video), and there are some weird jerks as the automatic setting either gets a bit confused or is “catching up” to me. So be warned – your mileage may vary!

Below is a screenshot of what it looks like mid-fix. You basically get a split screen to see if the video looks better, and a Yes or No button for saving the video.